Seven Mini Habits to Practice Daily

You can do it now or save it for later. Most of the time, if you procrastinate, your to-do list gets longer and the piles have grown and when you decide to tackle it, it’s going to take you longer to complete. Spend a few minutes tackling it in the moment and you’ll save hours on the back end.

Start practicing mini habits and before you know it, they’ll be incorporated into your everyday life and you’ll be able to accomplish more than you ever thought possible. 

Why are you procrastinating? What are you doing at the moment that allows you to be distracted? Are you really too busy? 

Here are seven mini habits you can start now:

Start placing your keys/phone in the same place. Every time you walk in the door, place your keys in a designated spot. You’ll never run late again because you forgot where you placed your keys. Same goes for your phone. Have a designated spot for your phone and practice placing it in the same spot. You have a home for your toothbrush, right? 

File receipts. After arriving home from shopping, take receipts out of the car, wallet, or pocketbook. Place them in a monthly pouch, file, or envelope. After you get in the habit of doing this, at the end of the month, match your receipts to your statement. Staple receipts to your statement and then file. If you decide you no longer need these receipts, shred them all in the moment. Your monthly pouch will then be empty and ready for you to fill with the current month’s purchases. If you receive your statements online, it’s still important to match your receipts to your statement to keep track of where money is spent and to be aware of what is being charged on your account.

Take trash out of your car. Is your car becoming a trash can? Practice taking your trash with you every time you get out of the car. You get out and the trash goes with you.

Open mail every day. Take a minute every day to open your mail. It will take you no time at all to categorize it and decide what to keep, shred, throw away, attach to your to-do list or to file. 

Take something out, put it away. It’s very elementary, but how many of you actually do this? You wear a shirt and instead of hanging it back up or putting it in the laundry, it ends up on the floor and before you know it, you have many small piles. Practice taking things out and putting them back. 

Keep a running shopping list. If you used the last of the paper towels and know you need more, write it down on a running shopping list. Clear the mental clutter and practice writing things down as you need them. You’ll never have to waste time or energy thinking about what you need to purchase.

File papers in the moment. You’ve just paid a bill, but you don’t feel like filing it right now. Why? Take a few seconds and file it. Items like this that get pushed to the side are the tasks that end up taking hours later. 

What’s your excuse for not practicing these mini-habits? If you aren’t doing any of the above, start small and incorporate one or two a month. They’ll get you one step closer to achieving your organizational goals.